No boozing please, we’re Japanese

As I have mentioned here many times, in Japan Drunkenness is Next to Godliness…even the Shinto gods love getting ripsnorting wasted. Especially salarymen, the Japanese are known as some of the worst falling down drunks on the planet. You can imagine my surprise when the following survey finds that Japan’s younger folks are much less interested in drinking with 40% of men in their 20s who never or almost never drink.

Younger Japanese men less interested in drinking, according to surveyJapan Today | 2016-Jan-05
…According to sales tax figures, the consumption of booze is down to about 89% of its heyday in 1996…
…to help shed light on this trend, wine website WineBazaar conducted a survey of 6,638 men and women between the ages of 20 and 70, asking “How often do you drink?”..
… things get interesting when factoring in age as well. Women stay roughly the same, with “non-drinkers” making up 40 to 50% of them regardless of age. For men over 60, only 25% are classified as “non-drinkers” but that number rises significantly to 39.8% when asking men in their 20s.More...

Basically, 40% of men in their 20s who report they “never or almost never drink” are really saying they can’t afford it. Also, company sponsored drinking is down 80% since the collapse of Japan’s economic “Bubble” in the early ’90s and the “Lost Decade(s)” of the continuing recession since then.